Various types of robots are known in the art which are employed for a variety of tasks in differing environments. Robots may be autonomous, semi-autonomous, or manually controlled. One kind of robots are robotic vehicles which traverse with the wheels and carry a payload.
Robotic vehicles may be deployed for a number of tasks in different environments. Robotic vehicles may be deployed in warehouses to carry items, in hostile environments for specific missions, or for surveillance purposes.
Specifically, with advances in warehouses automations more and more robotic vehicles are being deployed for moving items in a warehouse or industrial unit from one place to another.
Movement of robotic vehicles in closed environments such as warehouses or industrial units have attracted much attention in recent times due to rapid increase in e-commerce businesses which need efficient and fast mechanisms to cater to ever growing consumer demands for fast delivery of orders.
However, traversing mechanisms for robotic vehicles in state of the art suffers from several limitations. First, some robotic vehicles are capable of moving on a planar surface, such as a floor of a warehouse. These robotic vehicles lack mechanism for climbing any elevation. Other robotic vehicles are capable of climbing elevation but lack mechanisms to carry any payload with them.
Some existing systems have tried to overcome above limitations by deploying two or more sets of robotic vehicles in the warehouse. First set of robotic vehicles navigate on the floor and a second set of robotic vehicles move up and down along vertical rails which connects levels/floors in the warehouse. The first set of robotic vehicles move the material/item/package (“payload”) to the vertical rails. The payload is manually transferred to the second set of robotic vehicles which takes the payload to a desired level or floor. As is evident from above, this is a cumbersome and time intensive process which also requires manual intervention.
Further, earlier mechanisms or structures provided for climbing an elevation by a robotic vehicle suffered from several limitations such as slippage of wheels of the robotic vehicle on the traversal track, incorrect angle of approach between teethed wheels of the robotic vehicle and a grooved/teethed traversal track.
The present disclosure provides traversal systems and methods for robotic vehicles to overcome above and other limitations of the existing systems.